Word.ws English Dictionary

hold dear

hold dear verb: to value highly; to care about greatly.

Verb

hold dear (third-person singular simple present holds dear, present participle holding dear, simple past and past participle held dear)

  1. (transitive) To value highly; to care about greatly.
    • Here, we see that climate denialism/skepticism might be informed by a certain version of anti-elitism—ironically enough, a value that many progressives hold dear.2018, Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, page 44

Synonyms of hold dear

Antonyms

Forms of hold dear

third-person singular presentholds dear
present participleholding dear
past participleheld dear
pastheld dear

Questions about hold dear

What does hold dear mean?
Hold dear means to value highly; to care about greatly.
What part of speech is hold dear?
Hold dear is a verb.
What is the past tense of hold dear?
The past tense of hold dear is held dear.

Words near hold dear in the dictionary

  1. hold by
  2. hold by the button
  3. hold cheap
  4. hold come what may
  5. hold court
  6. hold dear
  7. hold down
  8. hold down the fort
  9. hold fast
  10. hold fire
  11. hold firm

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold dear (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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